


Monsters

by Rainah (RainahFiclets)



Category: Black Sails
Genre: 4.10, Gen, Silver's traumatic but sufficiently vague backstory, musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 08:38:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12339246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainahFiclets/pseuds/Rainah
Summary: Flint's wrong, about the darkness. There are monsters there. Silver knows this, he knows their names, and he will put an end to this war before any more are created.





	Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> So with just over 24 hours to go before my fic exchange is due, I wrote angsty af Silverflint. 
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Unbeta'd

“This is how they survive,” Flint says, and it sounds like an ending. “You must know this. You’re too smart not to know this.” They’re standing in a grove of trees, in a forest wild and untouched by human hands. Until now. 

The Flint he knows, the Flint he loves, stares him down with something terrible and gentle on his face. As open as Silver has ever seen it, even as the words wash over him. “In the dark there is discovery, there is possibility, there is _freedom_ in the dark-”

And Silver stands there, helpless, uncomprehending. He thinks, _How can you not see? You’re as smart as I am, smarter_.

_How have you never seen the monsters that lurk in the dark?_

Because they’re there, the monsters he can see in the corners of his vision when he hasn’t beaten the past away quite enough. They wear the faces of people he loved, people he trusted. They whisper, a chorus; _it’s our secret,_ and _come with me_ , and _don’t tell your mother_ , orders on silken tongues and rough calloused fingers. They stretch on and on, until he can’t see the end of them, couldn’t count them if he tried. 

He’s seen the monsters that Flint talks about with such scorn. And he wonders, not for the first time, how a man who has endured so much pain has never known this. 

In the light there is restriction, there is proprietary, but there was also the safety of it’s brightness, safety from men who didn’t want their immorality known. Silver’s been in the darkness. He’s been in the light. He knows, far more intimately than Flint, that there is no _better_ , there is never _better_ , just different.

That _possibility_ can be _disaster_ and freedom can be the freedom to hurt as well as the freedom to be.

Flint has always been the actor in need of freedom. He has never been the acted upon, at the mercy of society’s whims and judgements. And to fight a war for this? To lose Madi to a knife, and Flint to the darkness… for what? For the potential of things he has spent the majority of his life running from.

_I don’t need the dark,_ he thinks, so desperate for Flint to see. _I don’t need your war. I need Madi, I need you. I need to keep you safe._ “This isn’t about England,” he says. “Or her king, or our freedom, or any of it.”

_This is about us. This is about holding on to the one good thing I’ve found in this life._ He’s seen that road, and where it takes him. Where it took Flint, when he lost the one good thing he’d found. Silver’s found something worth _living_ for. He has found something good, something untouched by horrors, and he is not about to see the hope die in her eyes when the world forces its bitter truths upon her.

“I see a life for myself with her,” Silver says, watching every muscle of Flint’s face. Seeing them break, then settle into a sad resignation. “I will not live it wondering if tomorrow is the day your nightmare finally takes her away for good.” 

Let them be the monsters in the stories. Silver has met monsters, he knows their names. He knows that to someone, somewhere, there are people whose monsters bear Flint’s name. There may even be monsters that bear his.

He raises his gun against Flint, and says the words he must. They will walk out of here together, and Silver will kill this war for good. They will forgive him, or not. The world will write its stories. But he will create no more monsters.

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is thellamaduo.tumblr.com if you want to yell at me about black sails/silver/silverflint unless you are Karli here to yell at me about not having my exchange fic done


End file.
